Herculean Chess

This is a rules file for Zillions of Games, a Windows program that will let you play any puzzle or strategy board game you can feed it the rules to. With Zillions-of-Games installed, this rules file will let you play this game against your computer.

Description

Herculean Chess is played like standard chess except for following modifications:

1. Flexible Castling - The king can castle by moving 1 to 5 squares towards rook. The rook always ends up next to the king on the other side as in standard chess. The same rules: cannot castle out of check, king cannot pass over squares attacked by enemy etc apply.

The choice of castling depends on whether it is more desirable to immediately have the rook in the center file or the king tucked away at the wing.

Note: When carrying out 1 step castling, Zillions pops up a box asking to choose a move.

The second move indicating kings move AND the rook to move to king square (Rook x king) is the castling move.

2. The standard pawn move is modified slightly â€“ it can now move 1,2, or 3 squares initially. It can also move two spaces forward if it moved only 1 space or captured from original position.

En-passant is modified to accommodate this. A pawn that attempts to bypass an enemy pawn by making a double or triple move is captured En-passant.

This En-passant only applied to standard pawns. Ninja pawns cannot capture or be captured this way.

3. Pawns and ninja pawns promote in the last rank to any piece.

4. The larger board and the movement of the new pieces: the Ninja Pawn, the Wazir Knight, The Ferz Knight,the Ferz Sorcerer, the Wazir Sorcerer, Leaping Chariot, and Leaping Bishop.

For full details of the moves please see:

http://chess.computerwebservices.net/herculean.php

In addition to the main game , there are two extra variations.

Both involve the Sorcerer Knights that replace the Ferz-Sorcerer and Wazir Sorcerer.

In first variation, the Sorcerer Knights must follow one of two possible paths to reach their destination squares.

Download instructions

Extract the contents of the .zip file to your Zillions of Games folder

Be sure you have the "Use folder names" checkbox checked when you extract the files.

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Comments

Some tips for players who try this preset out:
Even if you cannot beat zillions in orthodox chess, you have a chance in this game.
The reason: pawn play!
Zillions is horrible in the way it moves pawns. Its logic is as follows: - the starting configuration is very safe for the king. Pushing the pawn forward weakens it
Therefore it very rarely moves pawns all the way to the center.
Zillions even prefers to move the ninja pawns sideways.
The trick to winning is to control the center with pawns, watch out for threats from the sorcerers/other pieces - zillions keeps hopping those into your territory. Once you fend out piece attacks, zillions cannot win. It has absolutely no basic strategy built into algorithm unlike new chess playing software that is much stronger.
Once it brings its queen into your territory keep attacking it - (but be careful) and soon you will have the queen trapped.
It played exactly the same way with the queen in std chess against another computer (crafty) . It always ends up losing the queen and then the game.
To draw, you can barricade yourself in the starting position and zillions cannot win! It keeps shuffling its pieces into your territory looking for forks, attacks etc.
It never charges with the pawns which is the way to win if your opponent does this.
My analysis: the more you can limit its tactics, the better - in Herculean you have a good chance of doing this with the pawns. Thus, one can argue that this is 'harder' for a computer than regular chess. But I am sure that all new software will have no problems at all - pawn play is far superior in new computers.